1. Field of The Invention
The invention relates to electrical connectors, and particularly to the electrical connector, which is adapted to be mounted on the PC board, with a back shell for protectively enclosing the contact tails of the connector.
2. The Related Art
It is known that the connectors used in the interior of the computer and adapted to be mounted on the internal PC board, may be categorized with two types wherein one is of the straight contact and the other is of the right angle contact. The former generally has a vertical type housing enclosing a plurality of vertical type contacts whereby the tail portions of the contacts may extend into the corresponding holes in the PC board on which the connector is mounted. The latter generally has a horizontal type housing with a plurality of horizontal type contacts therein whereby the tail portion of each contact further includes a right angle section to have its corresponding tip extend downward to the PC board on which the connector is mounted. It can be understood that the right angle type contact tail of the contact may use more material than that of the vertical type and certainly also have a significant exposed portion on the back side of the housing of the connector.
It is seen that such exposed portions of the contact tails may be easily damaged during the shipping or assembling process, for example, scratching of the plating layer on the surface of the contact tail, or tilting of the contact tail. Those defects may result in difficulties of assembling and poor soldering.
Therefore, it is desired to have a device adapted to protectively cover such exposed portions of the contact tails for the connector while not jeopardizing simplicity and/or economy of the original design. It is also noted that some I/O (Input/Output) connectors mounted to the backpanel of the computer case, may have an attached metal shield on the back side, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,999, while such metal shield on the back of the housing is required to have the complicated structures for implementation of both shielding and grounding and for compliance with the specific configuration of the connector housing. In contrast, because the invention is intended to be used with a card edge type connector on the mother board, grounding consideration is no longer a major factor, and an easy and inexpensive way to provide a protective shield around the back portion of the housing in compliance with the original standard dimension of the housing of the connector, is desired at present.